


midsummer

by soundthebells (kosy)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Relationship Study, Season/Series 03, just before the Unknowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:55:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24463873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/soundthebells
Summary: Tim slips outside during a planning session for the Unknowing. Jon follows.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Comments: 38
Kudos: 131





	midsummer

**Author's Note:**

> hey there! content warning here for s3 tim's suicide ideation (though it is implied only briefly rather than outright discussed or mentioned, but better safe than sorry!). this could be read as a companion piece to [halflight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24358495) if you like, but it still stands fully on its own. thank you for reading!

There’s this alleyway that runs alongside the Institute, a cramped narrow thing that’s barely even visible from the street. Claustrophobic, sort of, but these days you have to choose between the lesser of evils, even in the moments of stolen peace. So Tim steps outside there sometimes if he needs to calm down or if he just wants to kill time. When he even bothers to come into work. 

It’s not the middle of the day now, though. It’s late, later than it has any right being with him still here. The moon’s out but only barely, a pale smear peeking out over the edge of the roof. He tilts his head back to look at it, more out of habit than out of any urge to. Some remembered instinct. Remnants of who he used to be, maybe; the kind of man who stared up at the night sky because it was beautiful and he appreciated things that were beautiful. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he thought the word _beautiful_ and meant it. 

It’s July and the air sits warm and heavy in his lungs, smelling sickly of the city. Inside, they’re planning. Always planning. They work and rework the mechanisms of their shared suicide mission as if the repetition of its impossibility will be enough to reshape it into something survivable. And he just—he can’t anymore. Can’t stand to hear Basira hashing out entry points and possible means of egress and blast radius and detonator range. Heat and shrapnel and a building shaken down to its foundations. 

It’s July, late July, and the moon is rising higher. He wishes it were cold out just so he could feel the bite of it, but this hot night rests rotten on his skin. 

Behind him, the door creaks open. Jon. Scrawny and tired-looking, a network of scar tissue and hurt and fear that never quite leaves the lines of his face anymore. Tim remembers the days of paranoia with the angry eyes and the aimless terror, and before that the days of unkindness with the spine tense from stress and furrowed brow. And before that, so distantly, the days where things were just _good._

He doesn’t say anything, just stands on the stoop next to him, swaying slightly. Tim wonders against his will how long it’s been since he slept. 

He’s never done anything by halves, Tim Stoker. His hatred for someone never eclipses his love for them, just exists alongside it, burning and contradictory and inextricable. Or maybe he never hated Jon at all. Maybe the anger is just him doing what’s easy. Figures. Hurting and being hurt have become the easiest things in the world for him. 

It’s July, the 29th of July. A year ago today Tim came back from lunch late to an empty archive and an end to most things that mattered. He didn’t even register it until it was far, far too late. 

“Tim,” Jon says after a long few minutes. As if that’s supposed to explain anything. 

“What do you want,” he says flatly. 

A choked-off laugh. “I don’t _know.”_ His burnt hand is clenching and unclenching, grasping at nothing. 

A year ago, Tim would’ve done something. Taken his hand, maybe. He was good at this, at stilling storms into a man who breathes and sleeps and sometimes even smiles. A hand laid on the side of the cheek, fingers resting on the hinge of the jaw. A kiss, gentle or bruising or whatever else was needed. A few words. A drink after work. Anything Jon wanted. Anything that would make him relax. He was good at holding him and making sure he felt held. _Was_ good. Somewhere along the line it stopped working and so Tim stopped trying and it hadn’t taken long for things to fall apart after that. 

“I thought knowing was your job.” He wants, so badly, to be unforgiving. He wants Jon to not deserve his forgiveness, and he wants him to want it and not have it. He wonders if Jon regrets any of it. If he grieves the loss as much as Tim does. 

That elicits another laugh, equally broken. “Not when it matters.” 

Tim thinks he should feel like fire, with everything that is soon to come. Bright and burning and righteous and all-encompassing. Taking the vengeance he deserves with the joyful destruction of the most intense blazes. He doesn’t, though. He thinks he’s been burned out already. He thinks maybe he’s just what’s left afterward, the scarred earth and unbreathable air. Nothing left either to burn or decay. No soil to regrow from. Not the justified destruction but the rubble left in its wake, and for _what?_

He waits for Jon to say something else. Not apologize, certainly—he knows better than to expect that. But something. 

Instead, Jon slumps back against the brick, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, and Tim thinks _I miss you_ with a clarity so sudden and fierce it almost staggers him.

 _We got it all wrong, didn’t we?_ he thinks. They had. It all went to ruin, somehow, between the silence and the deaths and the months of absence, between the distrust and the weeks running lost in the hallways and the corpse in the office, between the kisses stolen in the library and the nights in at Tim’s flat and hands furtively held on the tube, everything so timid and new and quietly hopeful. And the worst thing is he doesn’t know when he could have done anything different. Can’t pinpoint a moment that might have changed how everything would so inevitably turn out. They fell apart not like a gunshot but like starvation. 

He looks at Jon, the shaking in-out breaths and the matching scars. It’s so quiet in this alleyway, even the noises of the city seeming muffled. The only noise is the raspshudder of Jon breathing. He can almost pretend they aren’t being watched by anything but the few stars shining bravely through the smog. This, here, is the closest to sanctuary he can get. 

He looks at Jon, lonely, frightened Jon, Jon who he loved once, Jon who he should have stopped loving months ago. Jon who is beautiful, and who would never give him the mercy of just leaving him be. 

It’s probably because they’re going to die soon, but when he looks at Jon, and Jon slowly pulls his hands away from his face and looks back, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look away. Jon takes another breath and suddenly he’s colliding with him and for a frenzied, senseless moment Tim thinks he’s attacking him, that he’s going to be fucking strangled to death or something in this alleyway by his boss, but then Jon’s hands are clutching the lapels of his jacket and he’s tugging him down to kiss him, graceless and sharp and messy. Maybe this is when Tim would usually ease back, try to deescalate, try for something like reason, but he can’t, not now, not when everything feels like his last chance. _Last chance,_ he thinks as he runs his thumb over the hard line of Jon’s jaw to tilt his face closer. _Last chance,_ he thinks, twisting fingers into greying hair. _Last chance,_ he thinks, feeling Jon sigh softly against his lips. He keeps his eyes closed longer than he usually would, as if that would somehow make this last longer. 

It doesn’t, of course. Jon pulls away, rocking back on his heels, and his hands loosen on Tim’s jacket, long fingers uncurling. _Last chance._

“I think they’re wrapping up inside,” Jon says, voice rough and barely audible. “We should, um. They’ll be wondering where we are.”

Because Tim is kind or maybe just too comfortable being miserable, he does not say _they don’t care about either of us._

If the two of them wanted, if they _really_ wanted, they could stay here forever and pretend their scars weren’t scars. Nobody would notice. They could pretend it was any year they liked, that they had snuck away from the crowd in the research bullpen to make out in the alleyway because they were young and dumb and they had more time than they knew what to do with. They could pretend Sasha was still there to tease them about it when they came back, wearing a face they both recognized. They could pretend none of that all and just be two men in the dark, hands and lips and teeth and skin. They could be alive and here. They could believe, just for a little bit, that they both won’t be dead in less than ten days. 

But Tim just nods and shoves his hands into his pockets so he doesn't touch him again, even by accident. Jon gives him one last look, haunted and horribly sad, and pushes the door back into the Institute open. Tim walks through and doesn’t wait for him to follow. He knows better than to think this changes anything. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! you can find me on tumblr [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com), and comments/kudos are always appreciated if you're inclined to leave them. thanks again! :)


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